LANSING — Proposals to change the way the boards are selected at Michigan State University, University of Michigan and Wayne State University are unlikely to see a vote in the House of Representatives.

Introduced in the wake of a sexual abuse scandal at Michigan State University and widespread calls for the MSU board of trustees to resign, Republican lawmakers said Thursday that the board members at the three universities should be chosen in the same way as 12 other public universities in the state – appointed by the governor.

“It transitions the three universities over to an appointment system. And as of Jan. 1, 2019, the boards will be dissolved and appointed by whoever is elected governor in 2018,” said state Rep. James Lower, R-Cedar Lake.

Rep. Robert VerHeulen, R-Walker, said the appointment process for the 12 universities works well and candidates are more thoroughly vetted by the governor's staff before any appointments are made.

"Governors of both parties have avoided partisan politics" with their selections, he said. "And this doesn't remove people from the process, it gives them the chance to say which choice they would prefer."

But Democrats on the House Elections and Ethics committee said that aside from the situation at MSU, the boards at U-M and WSU are working well and the universities are thriving.

“I do not understand moving this from voters having direct ability to affect that election to a gubernatorial process,” said Rep. Adam Zemke, D-Ann Arbor. “Some of the gubernatorial appointments we’ve gotten — look at the debacle in Flint — I don’t see how this increases accountability.”

Rep. Jeremy Moss, D-Southfield, added, “I’m disgusted by the MSU Board of Trustees and I’d like to see them all go. But I’m not sure this is a solution to the problem.”

The difficulty for getting enough support for the proposal is that it would mean a change in the state’s constitution, which requires a lofty 2/3 majority vote in the House and Senate and then it would have to appear on the November statewide ballot.

“There is healthy opposition from the Democratic side, so this probably won’t have wings as far as taking off in the Legislature,” said Rep. Aaron Miller, R-Sturgis. “From here, I’m pessimistic.”

Miller, who as chairman of the House Elections and Ethics committee hasn’t scheduled any more hearings on the proposals, said he’d like to see a change in how the university board candidates are initially selected, shifting away from nominating the board candidates at political party conventions that are populated by a narrow segment of the population.

“I have not been to a Democratic convention,” he said, but on the Republican side, “what the votes tend to be is that the candidates who win are the ones who can jump the highest on the conservative measuring stick and that doesn’t have anything to do with running a university.”

House Minority Leader Sam Singh, D-East Lansing, said he was discouraged that the first bills to get a hearing in the aftermath of the problems at MSU deal with governance of the universities.

“I don’t have a problem with having a conversation about governance, but as of right now the urgency should not be about how we change governance, but how we stop sexual assault on campus,” he said. “That should be where we put our time and priority.”

A bill in the Senate would change the state’s constitution to have voters select university boards, as well as the state Board of Education, attorney general and secretary of state during primary elections, rather than at political party conventions. But the bill, sponsored by Sen. Ian Conyers, D-Detroit, is unlikely to get a vote in the Republican-controlled Senate.